[haiku-appserver] Re: drawing thread

>  I think it's time for a drawing thread inside app_server.

Perhaps.  That remains to be seen.

>  ATM invalidating and drawing is done from almost every thread in
> app_server. IMHO this is not that good as we do need a lot of locking, and
> code flow is hard to follow. I propose we have methods like ::Invalidate,
> ::Redraw, which if executed from another thread than this drawing_thread,
> automatically send port messages for the requested action.

Reducing the amount of required locking is probably a good thing, although I 
am not totally clear on what you are proposing as a replacement to the 
current system (it might help if I paid more attention to the current 
implementation of the desktop code).  Could you elborate more on the system 
that you have in mind?
One advantage that I can see to having a single drawing thread that receive a 
bunch of messages is that it could allow us to prevent starvation for access 
to the DisplayDriver.  If I am not mistaken, under the current system with 
all of the threads making calls to the DisplayDriver, we could end up in a 
situation where a thread or group of threads keeps hammering on the 
DisplayDriver, and another thread never manages to get the lock because 
everybody else manages to cut ahead in line.  If we have a single thread 
responsible for drawing, we can just fire off the message and build up a 
queue of things to do (assuming that there isn't some risk of starvation in 
passing the messages).  Of course, this whole argument is meaningless if 
there is some sort of FIFO mechanism on the Lock.

>  In this thread I think it is better we also execute window manager's code.
> This thread would wait for input data (mouse events, keyboard events,
> invalidate_or_redraw_messages) and move/resize/hide/show windows by calling
> ::Invalidate and :: Redraw() methods.

Again, some more elaboration might help.  Maybe it is just because I am tired 
and am not an expert on stuff outside of the DisplayDriver.  I now have the 
urge to say "Throw me a frickin bone" in a bad British accent.


Gabe

Other related posts: